Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars is such a well-trodden landscape in games that more characters, sub-plots, locations and lightsaber colours have come out of video games than ever graced the movies. Sadly, like the movies, only a very few such games are worth your time. And coming soon, of course, is a new one. One that really, really wants to be good.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is set years before the movies and harkens back to a time when Jedis were Jedis and a Wookie could be a Wookie. It’s a MMORPG, which comes with certain issues right off the top: there are quests, level grinding, massive inventories and the pain of dealing with other people just out to cause grief. There’s also repetitive gameplay, middling graphics, and an overall sense that your one, low-level guy just isn’t all that important in a universe with Yoda kicking around.

But Bioware, developer of some of the best-dialogued games in history, is looking to change a lot of that. Your character comes across a huge number of moral choices in each quest, and few of them are as clear as saving orphans or using them for target practice. Your character goes into many dungeons alone and can cut through them at their own pace, unbothered, and with a small team, you can have a fun time taking out some evil droids.

SW:TOR is good fun for a MMORPG and tries to solve a number of the frustrations of games like World of Warcraft. This isn’t BioWare’s first time in the Star Wars universe, so they know what they’re doing, but since this is a game for millions of players at once, it remains to be seen if that makes it better or worse.